These Are the Best Types of Exercises for Weight Loss

Starting an exercise routine doesn’t guarantee you’ll lose weight, but many of us add exercise to our routines when we have a weight loss goal. Read on and I’ll explain what you really need to know about exercise for weight loss—what, how much, and whether it even matters.

Yes, exercise (sort of) helps you lose weight.

There’s a cliché in the fitness world that the best exercises for weight loss are “fork squats and plate push-ups.” I hate it when people turn fitness goals into diet goals, so this formulation drives me crazy, but there is some truth to it.

In fact, your body weight is determined by both how active you are and how much you eat . If you want predictable results, you need to pay attention to both sides of the equation. So if you simply add exercise without changing your diet, you may end up eating more without even realizing it, and thus remain at the same weight.

But this is only part of the picture. Technically, you can lose weight by simply eating less food without adding any exercise at all. But is this a good idea? Not at all. Exercise is good for your heart health, your mental health, your ability to stay productive as you age, and a hundred other reasons. These benefits apply whether we are losing weight or not.

How exercise helps you eat healthier

Ultimately, the role of exercise in weight loss is not (just) to achieve weight loss, but to keep you healthy while losing weight. This includes maintaining muscle mass and improving heart health, which I’ll talk about in a moment. But that’s not all: an underrated aspect of exercise is that the more you do it, the more you set yourself up for a healthier diet, a less restrictive relationship with food, and higher energy levels.

Let’s say we have a pair of twins who don’t exercise much, and they each burn about 1,800 calories a day. A person decides to lose weight by eating 1,300 calories without changing anything else. Another adds enough exercise daily to burn about 500 calories and thus continue to eat 1,800 calories. Both twins are now in a 500 calorie deficit and should be losing about a pound per week. Same thing, right? Not really.

Who has more room in their diet to eat more protein, fiber, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals? The man who eats 1800.

Who is more likely to be able to eat their favorite dessert from time to time instead of giving it up while on a diet? The man who eats 1800.

Who will be able to eat more carbohydrates, thereby eating better for whatever amount of exercise they end up doing? The man who eats 1800.

So, since both twins are using the same 500 calorie deficit, the numbers suggest that these approaches are equivalent. But people using these two approaches will have very different experiences.

The most important type of exercise for weight loss: strength training.

If you can only do one type of exercise when trying to lose weight, I would argue that it should have nothing to do with burning calories at all. This should be strength training.

This includes any type of exercise that aims to build strength and muscle mass. Lifting weights at the gym is the simplest example, but you can perform strength exercises with other types of equipment or, in some cases, no equipment at all. I have a list of 12 bodyweight exercises that will actually increase strength once you get strong enough that basic exercises like push-ups and air squats become too easy. In general, if you can do more than 15 reps of something before your muscles fatigue, you should move up to a heavier weight or harder exercise.

This is because we want to work on more than just endurance (that’s not the goal of strength training). This is because we want to convince our bodies to build muscle, or at least maintain the muscle we already have.

When we lose weight, we usually hope to lose fat, but muscle often accompanies this. Losing muscle mass means we are more likely to regain the weight we lost. This also means that it will be more difficult for us to do other types of exercise; It is better to run on strong legs than on weak ones. And it can also make us weaker when it comes to everyday tasks. Losing muscle mass is a huge problem for older adults, but strength training can slow or reverse it.

How much strength training to do when losing weight:

• Train at least twice a week.

• Try to work every part of the body, including the muscles of the upper and lower body, with pushing and pulling movements.

• Aim to perform at least three sets of each exercise, with reps ranging from 5 to 15 per set. By the end, you should feel like you can’t do any more (or that maybe you could do one or two more reps, tops).

These rules of thumb follow the general exercise guidelines that we should all follow anyway . If you enjoy strength training and want to get better, that’s great! Recommendations are the minimum.

The second most important type of exercise for weight loss is low- to moderate-intensity cardio.

As we saw in our twins example, exercise can burn enough calories to increase our overall calorie budget. And while exercise isn’t technically necessary to create a calorie deficit, it certainly helps.

Research shows that people who exercise regularly have an easier time losing weight and keeping it off than people who don’t exercise. For example, in this study, people burned 400 or 600 calories in a supervised cardio session five times a week, but did not restrict their diet or were given any diet advice at all. Most participants lost weight, losing an average of about 10 pounds by the end of 10 months. In contrast, participants in the control group who did not exercise, on average, finished the study about a pound from where they started.

However, burning that many calories five days a week requires a lot of time and effort. We’re talking about 45 to 60 minutes a day, at low to moderate intensity (this study involved people with heart rates between 70-80% of maximum, or in terms of heart rate zones , roughly zones 2 and 3).

Low- to moderate-intensity exercise makes the most sense for weight loss because it doesn’t cause extreme fatigue (so you can do a lot of exercise without feeling too tired) and doesn’t make you feel as hungry as intense exercise. If you’re a beginner, walking can be considered a cardio workout . As you get better, you can move on to jogging or other exercises such as cycling.

How much low- and moderate-intensity cardio to do when losing weight:

• Start with a little more than what you are doing now and increase from there.

• First, try to stick to 150 minutes per week (about 30 minutes, five times a week), and then see if you can increase that to 300 minutes per week (about an hour, five times a week).

• If you can’t reach these specific numbers, do what you can.

• Aim for “zone 2-3” intensity. It should feel like work, not torture . The thought of working at that intensity for 45 minutes should make you feel like “OK, let’s do this” rather than “Oh my God, I’m going to die.”

This low-intensity exercise doesn’t have to be the only exercise you do. If you want to run some fast intervals, exercise, do power yoga, or anything else outside of these recommendations, do it! Just remember that low-intensity exercise is a powerful tool for burning calories while maintaining energy and not making you feel overly hungry.

Worst Type of Exercise for Weight Loss: HIIT

I’m going to say something that may seem controversial, although I don’t think many real fitness professionals would disagree. HIIT is overrated.

HIIT is high-intensity interval training that can be an effective way to improve your aerobic fitness, at least in the short term. It’s a cool concept, but the name HIIT is used for all types of workouts that aren’t actually HIIT . Even if you do “real” HIIT, it’s not a magic bullet for weight loss and shouldn’t be the bulk of your workouts.

HIIT is essentially the opposite of the low-intensity cardio workouts I talked about above. HIIT is too strenuous to do more than a very short workout, and you probably don’t want to do it every day. If you do a lot of HIIT and are wondering why you feel tired, here’s why. It also tends to make some people hungry, negating the calorie-burning benefits. (However, people react to this differently, so feel free to try it and see if hunger is an issue for you or not.)

To make matters worse, you may be so tired from HIIT or so sore from a session of mock HIIT that you end up skipping your strength training. So not only is HIIT a less effective form of cardio, but it can also prevent you from participating in some other important workouts.

All of this is to say that you can do HIIT if you like HIIT or if you are interested in the aerobic benefits. Just don’t make it your bread and butter. Runners often use the 80/20 rule: 80% of your workouts should be light intensity; the remaining 20% ​​may include more complex things. And no, HIIT will not increase your cortisol levels, at least not in a bad way. This is a whole “yet another myth” .

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